You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you - John Bunyan
There is such a thing as giving too much.
It is not to be confused with altruism, philanthropy, or generosity. When you give too much you wait for pay back, and it may never come. Rather than bring you joy, your giving embitters you as you count what you get in return much more earnestly than you recognise what the other person gets from you. In the end you become bitter and resentful, because you never get the right 'price' for what you 'sold'.
This type of baggage is common among people who just can't seem to get their lives to work.
Often, the 'giving' it is shrouded in secrecy in the sense that you give without telling the recipient what you expect in return. You don't give them the choice to refuse what you offer, because, covertly, you are building their debt to you to a level where they cannot escape. You don't give the receiver of your 'generosity' the option to decide whether the price you are asking is worth the goods. You lie in wait for the day you can start reaping the fruits of your labour. And you are patient enough to wait years.
If you don't know what I mean, consider this: a parent who 'sacrifices everything' for a child, and so demands that the child defer to the parent's opinion even when they are adults with families of their own.
A spouse who gives up 'everything' and doesn't let the partner forget....poisoning the relationship to the death.
The employees who is available come night orday, weekends and public holidays, even Christmas, expecting that it will endear them to the boss and earn them the promotion.
Thing is, because the other party is not aware that such a contract exists, they are incapable of honouring it.
So, in the end, your giving was 'for nothing'. In other words, you gave too much.
If you count the 'cost' more often than the smiles it brings, review your intentions. If your 'sacrifices 'do not fill you with a glow here and now, but leave you counting the days to the moment you will begin to reap your 'just' rewards, ask yourself why. Behaving in a way that makes you smaller in order to please the other person, should set off the alarm bells. If your pleasure depends on the other person remaining dependent, or acquiescing, then, in Paulo Freire's words, it is not true generosity, which he defines as follows:
"True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands - whether of individuals or entire peoples - need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world."
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